If you have multiple vias in your rsync path (e.g. a -> b -> c) you can use an rsync filter rule to tell rsync: don’t transfer files that have . in the beginning of the filename! –filter ‘- .*’ This way you won’t have rsync temp files (named something like .filename.xxyyzz) from the a…
“Backups are becoming less and less necessary these days”, I’m told. High availability, cheap disk mirroring and snapshots, cloud storage, data syncing between services—all these factors make old-fashioned backups—the offline, offsite, multi-tier kind, probably to tape, an expensive and cumbersome luxury that is neither affordable nor needed today. I just got bitten, hard, by the…
The Call for Participation for LISA ’10 has just been published. If you have not attended a LISA conference before, then this would be a great year to start. Even if you don’t plan on submitting a paper or a talk proposal, reading the Call for Participation is a great way to understand how the…
Like probably almost anyone reading this blog, I’m a sysadmin. Specifically, I consider myself to be a pretty darned good one – years of experience, blah blah blah. One of the personality traits a “good sysadmin” has, is the drive and ability to learn new things. COMPLICATED things. No fear. Try out installing and setting…
OK, not related to work, but worthy of a blog entry at least. The other day I dove into VOIP for the first time. I admit, I’m a bit of a holdout with regards to my home phone service. I’m also old enough to recall the days when the phone in our house plugged into…
http://sysadvent.blogspot.com/
Just submitted an article on Cfengine 3 to http://sysadvent.blogspot.com/ – I guess it’ll be a few days before it’s posted.
Like many of you, I like to have some of the latest technology at my fingertips. Specifically, I’m talking about my workstation. No, while I don’t have über-fast sexy hardware, I like to at least have the latest OS flavor(s) installed so I can play with new features. The other day I decided it was…
I use OpenBSD’s packet filter, PF, and am in the middle of building a new router/firewall with a moderately complex ruleset. I generally code rulesets the same way I write shell scripts: adding small bits and testing. My basic ruleset was preventing routing, and the logs kept telling me that the routing packets were being…
I love it. Just when I start getting a little bored…, something comes along that basically makes me go, “WTF?” – and ends up giving me a chuckle in the end. There’s stuff that’s broken, and then there’s stuff that’s REALLY broken…. Very recently, we’ve been tasked with helping migrate key components of an old…